The US presidential election season is in full swing – the first voting of the long campaign took place Monday (1 February) in Iowa.

Cybersecurity and privacy haven’t grabbed a whole lot of attention so far, and average voters seem to know little about these important issues.

If you listen closely, however, the candidates are debating topics like encryption backdoors, surveillance and the NSA.

Do the candidates understand the technology? Do they recognize the potential consequences of their policy decisions? And are the wishes and interests of the people fairly represented by the parties and candidates?

Let’s have a look at what the presidential candidates are saying.

The Republicans

Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who took first place in the Republican caucus in Iowa, is known as a staunch conservative opposed to “big government.”

Cruz’s stance on government surveillance is pretty consistent with those views.

Shortly after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, by self-proclaimed supporters of the Islamic State, Cruz opposed many politicians in his own party who were calling for expanded government surveillance powers.

The USA Freedom Act signed into law earlier this year left our intelligence community with fewer tools to protect the American people and needlessly created more vulnerabilities and gaps in information gathering used to prevent terrorist attacks at home and abroad.

Rand Paul

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has long opposed NSA surveillance, and used the rare tactic of an hours-long Senate filibuster to delay voting on a renewal of the Patriot Act until after it has expired.

Paul said the Patriot Act was “the most unpatriotic of acts”:

There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer. That time is now, and I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged.

At one of the Republican debates last August, Paul clashed with Governor Chris Christie over NSA powers, with Christie claiming that the government needs “more tools” for fighting terrorism, and Paul arguing that the US Constitution requires a warrant for collecting data from Americans.

Jeb Bush

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is one of the few candidates to propose a set of cybersecurity policies, but he has criticized the Obama administration for its failure to prevent state-sponsored cyberattacks against key agencies and the breach of millions of federal workers’ personal information.

Although he hasn’t explicitly said technology companies should provide backdoors in their encryption products, Bush said encryption makes it “harder for the American government to do its job,” which he said is to “make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst.”

Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who, like Trump, has never held elected office, proposed that the federal government should work with “encryption specialists” to help the government gain access to encrypted data and communications.

Although special access for intelligence agencies could technically be called a backdoor, Carson says he does not want to “ban encryption.”

Sanders voted against the Patriot Act in 2001 and 2006, and also opposed the USA Freedom Act for not having enough privacy protections.

It’s not just government surveillance that Sanders opposes – he has also voiced concerns about the amount of data collected by private companies:

You would all be amazed, or maybe not, about the amount of information private companies and the government has in terms of the websites that you access, the products that you buy, where you are this very moment.

The also-rans

Republicans and Democrats have a wide range of views on surveillance and privacy issues, but some of the strongest pro-privacy candidates don’t have the backing of the major parties.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, running as a Libertarian, says on his campaign website that the American founding fathers would be “disgusted” by the government “spying on citizens’ private communications.”

8 comments on “Where do US presidential candidates stand on privacy and surveillance?”

You make a good point about Trump and Carson, who have never held elected office. Our (US) system is prone to inaction, and the situation is worsening. It hardly makes any difference what a candidate or president wants, they will still have to deal with three other groups, the Senate, the House and ultimately the Supreme court. I think that in Trump’s case, he could go in history as the president who accomplished the least, the US president is not the owner of a large privately held company, he’s not even a CEO with a friendly board.

The NSA will continue to do whatever it wants regardless of Snowden, the Congress or popular opinion. If you don’t believe me ask James Bamford, or search for “NSA and Bluffdale.”
As we say here in the US, “the NSA, the only government agency that listens.”

Hillary’s approach to terrorism is…censorship. On December 6 at the Brookings Institution, she was asked how she would deal with the dictatorship of Bashar Assad and the menace of ISIS. She responded, “We’re going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space. Just as we have to destroy their would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online space.

“You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints–you know, ‘freedom of speech,’ etc. But if we are truly in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating.”

Earlier that same day, on ABC’s This Week, she stated, “We’re going to need help fro Facebook and from YouTube and from Twitter” while announcing a strategy of fighting terrorists “in the air,” “on the ground,” and “on the internet.” “They cannot permit the recruitment and the actual direction of attacks or the celebration of violence. They’re going to have to help us take down these announcements and these appeals.”

Mr. Sanders has been on “our” side his whole life. Fighting the good fight. I would break bread with this man and let him have the larger share. I have been willing to vote for him for years, pushed for it forums for over 4 years. His record speaks for itself. What more to say?